【经济学人】仰望星辰丨2016.12.24丨总第772期

The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars. By Dava Sobel. Viking; 324 pages; $30. To be published in Britain by 4th Estate in January.

《玻璃宇宙:哈佛大学天文台的女性如何掌握了星球研究》一书由Dava Sobel所著、共324页、定价30美元，将于一月份由新闻界出版社在英国出版。

IN THE late 19th century an extraordinary group of women worked at the Harvard College Observatory. Known as “computers”, they charted the position ,and brightness of stars on a daily basis by applying mathematical formulae to the observations of their male colleagues who watched the sky. Harvard was unique in taking advantage of the burgeoning numbers of educated women in this way. When the observatory’s research was redirected towards photographing the heavens rather than observing them merely by eye, the duties of the “computers” expanded apace. Many of them would go on to extraordinary achievements in astronomy.

19世纪末，在哈佛大学天文台出现了一组杰出的女性团队。她们负责日常记录星球的位置和明亮程度，并对星象观察记录（当时观察星象主要由男性研究者负责）进行公式计算。她们是一群享有“计算机”之称的女子们。在启用数量激增的知识女性们来进行天文研究方面，哈佛堪称独一家。当天文台研究从过去的肉眼观察发展到了天空摄影时，这些“计算机们”的任务量激增，大多数的她们也开始了各自在天文学界伟大成就的征程。

• chart: v. 记录

• formulae: n. 公式

• burgeoning: adj. 迅速发展的

玻璃宇宙

The work of Harvard’s female staff was paid for largely by two other women, Anna Palmer Draper and Catherine Wolfe Bruce, heiresses with an enduring interest in astronomy. Dava Sobel, a former science writer for the New York Times who made her name with her bestselling first book, “ Longitude ” (1995), has spent several years poring over letters and studying archives in order to tell the story of the women-astronomers and their benefactors .

杰出的哈佛女研究者主要有两个人值得一提--Anna Palmer Draper 和 Catherine Wolfe Bruce。作为天文学的继承人，她们一直对天文保持着长久不衰的兴趣。 该书的作者Dava Sobel是《纽约时代》的前任科学作家。她的第一部作品《经度》（1995年）的畅销使她为大众所熟知。此前她花了好几年时间钻研信件并研究档案，最后为我们讲述了一个女天文学家们和她们的支持者的故事。

• heiresse: n. 女继承人

• enduring: adj. 持久的

• Longitude: n. 经度

• benefactor: n. 捐助者

一生都对星空有兴趣的Dava Sobel

The introduction of photography at the Harvard Ovservatory allowed the firmament to be captured on an unprecedented scale on eight by ten-inch glass plates. These plates, about half a million in all by 1992, when the observatory switched to digital storage methods, comprise the “glass universe” of her book’s title. They allowed the course of stars to be followed not just for a few nights, but for decades. Discoveries made by astronomers on other continents could be cross-checked with Harvard’s library. Perhaps more important, when starlight was split with the aid of a prism its spectrum could likewise be recorded.

哈佛天文台星象摄影的引进，研究者们可以使用8*10英尺（在当时已经到达先进水平）的玻璃板记录星象的运动。当1992年数字储存普及时，玻璃板数量已高达五百多万，这就是该书书名“玻璃宇宙”一词的来源。玻璃板记录星象使得过去只能记录连续几个晚上的星球运行轨迹一下扩展到了几十年。其他地方的天文学家甚至可以在哈佛图书馆复查自己的星空记录轨迹。 （期待您的翻译，明天会有针对这句话的长难句解析哟~）

• firmament: n. 天空

• unprecedented: adj. 前所未有的

• switch: v. 转变

• comprise: v. 包括

These spectra resemble long rainbow-coloured strips ( rendered in black and white on the plates’ photographic emulsion ) interspersed with numerous dark lines. Scientists would come to understand that the gaps in a spectrum are due to the absorption of light by the atoms of chemical elements that compose a star’s outer layers. As one astronomer triumphantly declared, the ability to divine a star’s constituents from its spectrum “made the chemist’s arms millions of miles long”. Stellar spectroscopy would also reveal other physical attributes of stars such as their temperature, eventually giving rise to the new field of astrophysics.

这些光谱和彩虹很像，由色彩缤纷的条带（在相机胶卷中是黑白色的）伴随着大量的黑线散布开。如此科学家们发现，光谱空隙是由于星球外层的化学元素原子吸收光线而产生。一位天文学家自豪地宣布，根据光谱可探测星球成分这一发现“让化学家们的研究可伸展到地球几千万公里之外” 。星球光谱学还可揭示星辰的其他物理属性，如星球气候。这一系列的研究为天体物理学研究开拓出了一个新的领域。

• strip: n. 条，带

• render: v. 使成为

• emulsion: n. 乳状液

• intersperse: v. 散布

星体辐射光谱

This extraordinary photographic record offered the Harvard Observatory team the chance to learn a great deal more about the stars. During routine studies of the plates in 1893, for example, Williamina Fleming found a nova, only the tenth to have been observed by astronomers in the West. She would go on to discover nine more. Annie Cannon catalogued hundreds of thousands of stars, in the process inventing a stellar classification system that is still in use by astronomers today.

这种奇特的记录方式为哈佛天文台工作的女性们打开了更多星象研究的视野。在1893年对天体的常规研究期间，Williamina Fleming发现了一颗新星，这是西方天文学家发现的第十颗新星。然而她的发现不止于此，Annie Cannon在创造恒星分类系统的过程中，发现了成千上万的恒星。该系统至今仍被现在的天文学家所采用。恒星周期性的忽明忽暗深深地吸引着Henrietta Leavitt。

• Catalogue：v. 登记分类

The cyclical dimming and brightening of variable stars fascinated Henrietta Leavitt, who became the first person to realise that the frequency of their pulsation was directly related to their brightness. This allowed astronomers to reliably measure how far away they were, to establish the gargantuan dimensions of the Milky Way, and the even greater distances between this galaxy and others. Perhaps most remarkable of all was Cecilia Payne, the first Harvard student (man or woman) to be awarded a PhD in astronomy. Her thesis in 1925 ascertained that, relative to the proportions of other elements, hydrogen is vastly more abundant in stars than it is on Earth.

因此，她成为了发现恒星的亮度和脉动频率有直接相关性的第一人。Henrietta的发现使天文学家后来能够对恒星距离进行准确的测量，丈量巨大的银河系，甚至银河系和其他星系的距离。或许这其中最出色的当属Cecilia Payne，她不仅是第一位获得天文学博士学位的哈佛生，还是第一位女博士。她在1925年发布的论文中表示，相对于其他元素的比例，恒星上的氢元素比地球上的更丰富。

• Gargantuan：adj. 巨大的

银河系

On seeing her thesis, Henry Norris Russell, an expert on the chemical composition of stars, told her that the result was “clearly impossible”. Four years later, Russell’s own calculations would lead him to admit that Payne had been right after all. The prevalence of hydrogen, he wrote at the end of his paper, “can hardly be doubted”. Unjustly, it was Russell at the time, not Payne, who was frequently credited with the discovery.

一位名为Henry Norris Russell的星球化学成分研究学者在看到了Cecilia Payne的论文后告知她该结论“很明显不可能”。四年后，Russell的计算最终让他不得不承认Payne是对的。他在自己的论文结尾中写道，氢的普遍存在“几乎不容置疑”。而不公平的是，当时Russell却成为了该发现多次被归功之人。

The few grumbles expressed by the “computers” of Harvard Observatory will be familiar to many women (and, to be fair, some men) within the academy today. “Sometimes I feel tempted to give up and let him find out what he is getting for $1,500 a year from me,” Fleming wrote in her journal after unfruitful salary negotiations with the director, “compared with $2,500 from some of the other [male] assistants.” Indeed, the directors seemed at times to have something of a sweatshop mentality towards their diligent assistants. Another boss measured computing tasks in units of “girl-hours” and “kilo-girl hours”.

哈佛天文台的女“电脑们”的不公平待遇和如今在天文机构工作的女性们（或者公平一点，也有男性）的相似。“有时当我想放弃的时候真想直接告诉我的男上司，与其他2500美元年薪的（男）助理相比，只有微薄的1500美元的我给他带来了怎样的回报。”Fleming几次与负责人谈判无果后这样写道。“事实上，当时的男学者们似乎在用‘血汗工厂’的模式来压榨他们的女助理们。当时一位男学者甚至用“女小时”和“女千时”来比喻衡量计算机的数据处理任务量。”

• Grumble：v. 抱怨

Ms Sobel is keen to absolve the directors of this charge. But there is no getting away from the fact that had they been occupied with fewer humdrum labours, the brilliant women whom she portrays in her book might well have achieved even more than they did. Afficionados of astronomy may be familiar with their names; now it is time they were known to a wider audience. Ms Sobel has drawn deeply from her sources, knitting together the lives and work of the women of Harvard Observatory into a peerless intellectual biography. “The Glass Universe” shines and twinkles as brightly as the stars themselves.

虽然Sobel本人希望，当时的女性天文研究者们受到压榨一事纯属谣言。但不可否认的是，如果书中提到的这些女研究者们的工作不是那么一味的单调乏味，她们获得的成功或许会超越这些男上司们。过去她们的名字可能只被天文爱好者们所熟知，而今更多的人开始了解她们。Sobel 女士通过其个人的深入调查，将这些在哈佛天文台工作过的女性们--一群无所畏惧的女性知识分子---的工作生活通过一部传记展示给我们。“玻璃宇宙”的故事正如璀璨的星辰一般熠熠生辉，向我们娓娓道来。